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Celestina As a Precursor to the Picaresque

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Celestina As a Precursor to the Picaresque CHAPTER 18 Celestina as a Precursor to the Picaresque Ted L. L. Bergman Introduction Picaresque literature, one of Spain’s greatest contributions to world literature, begins with the novel La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adver- sidades (The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities), published anonymously in 1554. The picaresque stands out from all preced- ing genres in its focus on the lower strata of society—with considerable em- phasis on that strata’s criminal or quasi-criminal population. The settings and character types that become commonplace in the picaresque are also sub- stantially represented in Celestina. Their presence has led many critics to see Rojas’s work as a sort of generic precursor, or at least a starting point in the development of the genre. Not surprisingly, Howard Mancing calls Celestina the beginning of “that great arc that [forms] the first significant manifestation of the modern novel.”1 Similarly, Dorothy Severin writes: “After Celestina, the writing of sentimental romances will eventually be abandoned, although they will continue to be read. Celestina opens the way for the picaresque genre.” She adds that the newness of the work can even sweep away the prevalence of for- merly dominant prose forms: “Celestina deals a blow to the world of aphorism and wisdom literature, and even Pleberio gives his own gloss on the lament. We also have a fatal clash of two literary worlds, that of the self-styled courtly lover (the fool) and the prototype picaresque world of the Spanish Bawd and her minions (the rogues).”2 Charles F. Fraker explains how the invention of indecorous characters links Celestina to the later picaresque tradition, specifically pointing to examples from the lower strata, and “certain moments in their careers” that form a con- tinuity in novelty when, “between the time of the publication of Celestina and 1 Howard Mancing, “Guzmán de Alfarache and after: The Spanish Picaresque Novel in the Seventeenth Century,” in The Picaresque Novel in Western Literature: From the Sixteenth Century to the Neopicaresque, ed. J. A. Garrido Ardila (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 40–59, p. 56. 2 Dorothy S. Severin, Tragicomedy and Novelistic Discourse in Celestina (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 48 and 2. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/97890043493��_0�9 Celestina as a Precursor to the Picaresque 293 the date of the composition of Lazarillo, the great umwelt, the order of accepted values, the shape of humanism and literary culture, had not greatly changed.”3 As each critic chooses to emphasize different stylistic and moralistic links be- tween Celestina and the picaresque, any difference of opinion or focus is often mitigated by a general acknowledgment of a shared real foundation underly- ing both literary worlds. The historian José Antonio Maravall details this foun- dation in his own capsule narration of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain’s internal migration from the countryside to the city: Upon approaching this urban belt of misery and inhabiting alongside each other in these zones, in the most subhuman manner, insalubrious and in repugnant promiscuity, it was possible to pass from one irregu- lar state to another. And in this mixed environment, defined by negative characteristics that contaminate one group by another, live habitually the families of pícaros (including those of the hostile servants in Celestina, to Lazarillo, to Buscón, etc.), when these are not those recently arrived from the rural areas.4 Because another chapter in this book will look specifically at prostitution, and also because prostitution is not featured heavily in the seminal Lazarillo and its most direct descendants, this chapter will mainly examine the male crimi- nal and quasi-criminal characters. We take this approach while recognizing that men thrive in the same environment as women, the one described by Maravall as “subhuman,” “insalubrious,” and of “repugnant promiscuity,” and that the non-prostitute’s lives and activities in Celestina are often inseparable from those of Celestina and her female followers. Pármeno Few picaresque novels are without a protagonist who begins young and through a series of adventures, steeped in the dealings of the lower classes, acquires a deep cynicism and world-weariness as he passes into adulthood. In various ways, Pármeno meets several of the important pícaro criteria.5 He is 3 Charles F. Fraker, Celestina: Genre and Rhetoric (London: Tamesis, 1990), p. 65. 4 José Antonio Maravall, La literatura picaresca desde la historia social (siglos XVI Y XVII) (Madrid: Taurus, 1986), pp. 63–64. Translation is mine. 5 Dorothy S. Severin, “Pármeno, Lazarillo y las novelas ejemplares,” Ínsula, no. 633 (1999): 26, p. 26..
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